Posted by JonI’ve been having some lively debates lately with clients on that age-old favourite, the respective definitions and roles of bid management versus proposal management.

In case it helps others, let’s go back to basics. Your organisation has a sales relationship with a current or prospective client. At some point, your salesperson will identify an opportunity to capture a piece of business at some point in the future. You’ll need to carry out a range of bid activities if you’re to win this contract or project – meeting the client, conducting proofs of concept, arranging reference site visits, negotiating… as part of which, you’ll doubtless submit a written proposal.

Our experience suggests that many of the problems experienced on larger deals result from confusion between the bid and proposal roles. Particularly, companies assume that their bid managers – client-facing, expert in bringing together the best technical and commercial resources to define a robust solution – are equally adept at articulating their story through the written word. And, frankly, that’s rarely the case – even were the bid manager to have the necessary time available to devote to the proposal effort.

Likewise, danger lurks whenever a proposal professional lays claim to expertise outside their scope of expertise. Ask me to coach a team through the negotiation phase? Not my skill – but I know the best people to do so. Get me to review the terms and conditions, design the offer, build the pricing model – I could probably muddle through (in some market sectors), but it’s not what I’m best at, what I’m paid for, or where I should be spending my time. And bidding is no place for enthusiastic amateurism.

APMP doesn’t always help matters: in its drive to grow its membership base over the years (and, perhaps, to reflect the commercial aspirations of some of its sponsoring companies), it’s diluted its focus away from proposal management (the clue’s in the name, folks) to discuss capture planning, business development and the like. You know: if I wanted an expert in business development, I’d turn to one of the many excellent sales consultancies or forums out there (such as Huthwaite or SAMA), rather than rely on a group of proposal folks seeking to broaden their horizons.

Cost of sale does play a factor, of course. I fully recognise that some organisations can’t afford to engage both a bid manager and a proposal manager on a deal – just as many can’t justify specialist writing, graphics or document management resource within their proposal centre. I’m nothing if not a pragmatist. But if there’s no separate bid manager, I’d advocate reallocating most of their responsibilities into the sales and technical teams, rather than inevitably compromising the quality of that so-important proposal. And the fact remains that those organisations which maximise their win rates do, by and large, clearly understand the difference between the bid and proposal, and resource their efforts accordingly.​

Thanks for the clarification….I thought people used bid manager and proposal manager interchangeably. In my experience (commercial, healthcare), your description of the bid manager is called the sales person or account manager. As always, you continue to teach me well! :-)

Reply

BJ Lownie

3/25/2016 04:37:39 pm

Excellent description and clarification sir.

Now for the fun of it, shall we throw ‘project manager’ into them mix? Or how about the ‘implementation manager’?

As Jon points out, someplaces – for a variety of reasons – these are one and the same person (such places. also as Jon points out, tend to have one person wearing all the ‘proposal hats’ (proposal manager, writer, formatter, production, shipper.)

I’ve often used the analogy of restaurants – it’s the difference between a small place where the chief cook and bottle washer is also the server, sweeper, cashier etc. THis is fine if all you want to do is serve sandwiches (and not terribly good ones at that.) However, if you wish to be a restaurant that’s closer to Jon’s typical standard (”How many stars do they have and what other restaurnats has this chef opened?”) there needs to be clearly defined roles and associated, highly specialized skills, training, goals and objectives, etc.